Chapter 3 - The Interrogation RoomThe federal holding room at the Southern District of New York field office smelled of industrial cleaner, ozone from old copy machines, and unmitigated panic.
Ethan Caldwell sat at the scarred metal interrogation table in his bespoke charcoal suit, his hands cuffed to a steel ring bolted into the wood. The tie he had fussed over so carefully before his keynote speech was hanging loose around his collar, stained with sweat and coffee.
The heavy steel door swung open, and I walked in, followed closely by Marcus Vance and two federal marshals.
I didn't sit down immediately. I stood behind the metal chair opposite Ethan, resting my hands on the cold backrest, looking down at the man who had spent three years treating me like a fool.
Ethan raised his head slowly. His eyes were bloodshot, rimmed with red, his hair disheveled.
“Olivia,” he choked out, his voice cracking into a pathetic, desperate whine. “Please... you have to call your father. You have to call Marcus. This is insane! They’re talking about twenty years for wire fraud and securities manipulation! They froze everything—my personal accounts, my trust funds, even my credit cards!”
“Yes, I know,” I said calmly, pulling out the chair and sitting down with smooth, unhurried grace. “Federal asset forfeiture is thorough like that. They don't leave much for legal fees when the evidence of embezzlement is gift-wrapped with your personal signature.”
Ethan slammed his cuffed hands against the table, rattling the steel ring. “I didn't embezzle anything! That money was for corporate expansion!”
“Corporations generally don't expand by buying sixty-thousand-dollar Cartier necklaces for twenty-four-year-old marketing assistants who list their occupation as ‘professional companion,’” Marcus Vance chimed in smoothly, dropping a thick red binder onto the table in front of him.
Marcus flipped open the binder to a series of high-resolution color photographs and signed hotel receipts.
“Furthermore, Mr. Caldwell,” Marcus continued, adjusting his gold-rimmed glasses, “our forensic accounting team has traced sixteen wire transfers totaling over two million dollars to shell companies in the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands. All of them linked directly to Miss Chun’s personal bank routing numbers. That’s not corporate expansion. That’s grand larceny, tax evasion, and interstate wire fraud.”
Ethan looked from Marcus to me, his chest heaving as reality finally began to break through his wall of impenetrable arrogance.
“You... you planned this,” he whispered, his voice trembling with disbelief. “All of it. The marriage... the quiet dinners... letting me build the company... you were just waiting to pull the trigger.”
“I didn't plan for you to cheat on me, Ethan,” I said, leaning forward, my eyes locking onto his with a cold, unblinking intensity. “I gave you loyalty. I gave you capital. I gave you my father’s commercial patent portfolio for free when your startup was six weeks away from total bankruptcy. All you had to do was be a decent human being. But you couldn't even manage that. You had to play the big shot. You had to humiliate me in front of three hundred people.”
Ethan swallowed hard, his throat bobbing frantically. Tears spilled over his lower eyelids, tracking ragged paths down his cheeks.
“Olivia... please,” he sobbed, his voice dropping into a pathetic, groveling plea. “We were husband and wife. We loved each other once! Don't do this to me. I’ll sign whatever you want. I’ll give you a divorce on your terms. I’ll walk away with nothing! Just... just call off the feds.”
I looked down at him with a profound, chilling emptiness.
“You already signed your terms, Ethan,” I said softly, recalling the papers he had shoved into my chest at the Plaza ballroom. “Remember? Waiver of support. Voluntary relinquishment of marital claims. You drafted them yourself. I just had them legally countersigned.”
Ethan buried his face in his cuffed hands, his shoulders shaking with desperate, helpless sobs.
May you like
I stood up, smoothed the front of my Dior pantsuit, and turned toward the door.
“Good luck with your arraignment tomorrow, Ethan,” I said over my shoulder. “Try to look nice for the press. You always did care so much about your photo creases.”
